Leftover Goodness | Giftie Etcetera: Leftover Goodness

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Leftover Goodness

I've started a new trend (but it's been going on for months now, so perhaps I should call it a habit) of making a chili every week or two and roast about once or twice a month. I used to struggle with eating at home, especially since I never had much protien to eat. But by making roast (takes about 10 minutes to process onions, brown meat, and season, 2 hours to cut, and another 10 or so to slice and store) and chili (10 minutes to brown, season, and save, with a couple of hours cooking in between), I've been eating at home more often and eating much less junk.

I eat the roast on whole wheat sandwiches with sliced tomatoes, with mashed potatoes, or with Lipton butter noodles or Easy Mac. The chili can go on nachos, toast with cheese, or tator tots with cheese. That's already 7 different meals! And while chili and roast aren't healthy like chicken, they are much better than the Oreo cookies and cereal I was living on before.

If I could just bring myself to add a fruit and a salad every day (especially since breakfast is usually a bowl of oatmeal and pretty healthy) and to cook one other yummy meal a week for variety (like snap beans or grilled shrimp), I'd be doing so well.

Etcetera.

1 comment:

Mathochist said...

Good for you! That is definitely a habit and not a trend!

Do you have a crock-pot? If not, you might want to invest in one. They make it really easy to cook healthy meals 'cause they do all the work while you're gone. If you get a big enough one, you can double recipes and freeze half for some other day/week when you're too busy to throw anything in before you leave. I'd be happy to send you one of my crock pot recipe books because most of the recipes in them have milk or eggs, or too many carbs for me, or some other reason we don't use them...

You can put fruit in your oatmeal to help get your fruits in. My fav is (frozen) blueberries or (dried) cranberries, but we also do apple, strawberry, banana... Sometimes I add them on top after cooking, sometimes I add them to the water before I boil it. They come out very differently, and make for a nice variety.

When you're ready to try something new, ask me for my veggie beef soup recipe. You can make a big ole' pot, eat some fresh and freeze a lot of it for later. When you thaw it you can make it different by adding rice, or noodles, or a can of beans, or barley.